Jo'burg sends in Red Ants in defiance of ConCourt

Jens Pederson, project coordinator for MSF in Johannesburg, said putting vulnerable people on the street was inhumane. Among the displaced were children and people with chronic conditions such as TB, asthma and hypertension. "We are concerned when people are abruptly evicted without the opportunity to remove their belongings, which includes medications," he said. "There are people with chronic conditions who have now lost their medication." Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon, a researcher with the African Centre for Migration and Society, who has done research into the many hijacked buildings in the city centre, said it's likely that many of the people evicted on Wednesday would simply move into other illegal buildings. "The cycle will just continue," he said. "The reason people are staying in buildings like this is because they can't afford formal accommodation. Many of them would move into formal accommodation if it was affordable," he said. Wilhelm-Solomon said there's a chronic lack of affordable accommodation in the inner city for the "lowest rung" of people in the city, those working in the informal economy or begging. "Even in affordable housing, the basic minimum you could [pay for] a very simple room in a warehouse in this area is around R1 000 and that's more than many families can afford," he said. "There really needs to be affordable, formal accommodation at a lower cost which may take government subsidies. These are complex issues that take a long time [to solve]." The City of Johannesburg could not be reached for comment by the time this story was published.